Free Audiobook: Peter Pan

Tantor Audio is offering free downloads of an e-book/audiobook combo of Peter Pan. This is the non-Disneyfied version of the story. If, like Wendy Darling, you wish you didn't have to grow up, this book is for you.

No financial information is required to establish an account or download free files from Tantor. This offer expires at the end of the month (August), so get it while you can.

Free Audiobooks: Sold and Let Me Stand Alone

Two audiobooks are available for free from SYNC this week (through August 22th).

Sold
by Patricia McCormick
Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut on a mountain in Nepal. Though she is desperately poor, her life is full of simple pleasures, like playing hopscotch with her best friend from school and having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family’s crops, Lakshmi’s stepfather says she must leave home and take a job to support her family.

He introduces her to a glamorous stranger who tells her she will find her a job as a maid in the city. Glad to be able to help, Lakshmi journeys to India and arrives at “Happiness House” full of hope. But she soon learns the unthinkable truth: she has been sold into prostitution.

An old woman named Mumtaz rules the brothel with cruelty and cunning. She tells Lakshmi that she is trapped there until she can pay off her family’s debt—then cheats Lakshmi of her meager earnings so that she can never leave. Lakshmi’s life becomes a nightmare from which she cannot escape. Still, she lives by her mother’s words—Simply to endure is to triumph—and gradually, she forms friendships with the other girls that enable her to survive in this terrifying new world. Then the day comes when she must make a decision—will she risk everything for a chance to reclaim her life?

Written in spare and evocative vignettes, this powerful novel renders a world that is as unimaginable as it is real, and a girl who not only survives but triumphs.

Let Me Stand Alone by Rachel Corrie
Rachel Corrie’s determination to make a better, more peaceful world took her from Olympia, Washington, to the Middle East, where she died in 2003 while trying to block the demolition of a Palestinian family’s home in the Gaza Strip. A twenty-three-year-old American activist, Corrie also possessed a striking gift for poetry, writing, and drawing. Let Me Stand Alone, a selection of her journals and letters as chosen by her family, reveals her story in her own hand, from her precocious reflections as a young girl to her final e-mails. Corrie’s words—whether writing about the looming issues of our time or the ordinary angst of an American teen—bring to life all that it means to come of age: a dawning sense of self, a thirst for one’s own ideals, and an evolving connection to others, near and far.

To get either audiobook (or both!) start at the download page.

You'll need to install the OverDrive® Media Console™ first, but the page walks you through that. The audiobooks have download buttons below the green sync-head thing in the third column of the page.

Enjoy!

Free Audiobooks: Enchanted and Through the Looking Glass

Two audiobooks are available for free from SYNC this week (through August 15th).

Enchanted
by Alethea Kontis
It isn’t easy being Sunday’s child, not when you’re the rather overlooked and unhappy youngest sibling to sisters named for the other six days of the week. Sunday’s only comfort is writing stories, although what she writes has a terrible tendency to come true.

When Sunday meets an enchanted frog who asks about her stories, the two become friends. Soon that friendship deepens into something magical. One night, Sunday kisses her frog goodbye and leaves, not realizing that her love has transformed him back into Rumbold, the crown prince of Arilland — and a man Sunday’s family despises.

The prince returns to his castle, intent on making Sunday fall in love with him as the man he is, not the frog he was. But Sunday is not so easy to woo. How can she feel such a strange, strong attraction to this prince she barely knows? And what twisted secrets lie hidden in his past — and hers?

Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll
Follow Alice on her next adventure.

When Alice steps through the looking-glass, she enters a very strange world of chess pieces and nursery rhyme characters such as Humpty Dumpty, Tweedledee and Tweedledum and the angry Red Queen. Nothing is what it seems and, in fact, through the looking-glass, everything is distorted.

Note: The "Alice" story is the sequel to Alice in Wonderland. Still worth downloading/listening to, but be aware what you're getting.

To get either audiobook (or both!) start at the download page.

You'll need to install the OverDrive® Media Console™ first, but the page walks you through that. The audiobooks have download buttons below the green sync-head thing in the third column of the page.

Enjoy!

Free Audiobooks: Death Cloud and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Two audiobooks are available for free from SYNC this week (through August 1st).

Death Cloud
by Andrew Lane
It is the summer of 1868, and Sherlock Holmes is fourteen. On break from boarding school, he is staying with eccentric strangers—his uncle and aunt—in their vast house in Hampshire. When two local people die from symptoms that resemble the plague, Holmes begins to investigate what really killed them, helped by his new tutor, an American named Amyus Crowe. So begins Sherlock’s true education in detection, as he discovers the dastardly crimes of a brilliantly sinister villain of exquisitely malign intent.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Since Doyle created the immortal Sherlock Holmes and his assistant Dr. Watson, no other mystery writer has come close to eclipsing him as the standard bearer in crime fiction. A brilliant London-based “consulting detective,” Holmes is famous for his intellectual prowess and renowned for his skillful use of astute observation, deductive reasoning, and inference to solve difficult cases. This collection includes twelve of Holmes’s most famous cases: A Scandal in Bohemia, The Red-Headed League, A Case of Identity, The Boscombe Valley Mystery, The Five Orange Pips, The Man with the Twisted Lip, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, The Adventure of the Speckled Band, The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb, The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor, The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet, and The Adventure of the Copper Beeches.

Still in England this week, but instead of princes we have the king of detectives: Sherlock Holmes. If you haven't been downloading the audiobooks, do yourself a favor and get these. I can't vouch for Death Cloud because I haven't read/listened to it yet, but the Conan Doyle is good stuff. It's what turned me into a reader when I was younger.

To get either audiobook (or both!) start at the download page.

You'll need to install the OverDrive® Media Console™ first, but the page walks you through that. The audiobooks have download buttons below the green sync-head thing in the third column of the page.

Enjoy!

Free Audiobooks: The False Prince and The Prince and the Pauper

Two audiobooks are available for free from SYNC this week (through August 1st).

The False Prince
by Jennifer A. Nielsen
In a discontent kingdom, civil war is brewing. To unify the divided people, Conner, a nobleman of the court, devises a cunning plan to find an impersonator of the king’s long-lost son and install him as a puppet prince. Three orphans are recruited to compete for the role, including a defiant boy named Sage. Sage knows that Conner’s motives are more than questionable, yet his life balances on a sword’s point – he must be chosen to play the prince or he will certainly be killed. But Sage’s rivals have their own agendas as well.

The Prince and the Pauper
by Mark Twain
They look alike, but they live in very different worlds. Tom Canty, impoverished and abused by his father, is fascinated with royalty. Edward Tudor, heir to the throne of England, is kind and generous but wants to run free and play in the river—just once. How insubstantial their differences truly are becomes clear when a chance encounter leads to an exchange of clothing—and roles. The pauper finds himself caught up in the pomp and folly of the royal court, a role which is further complicated when the king dies soon after the switch; and the prince wanders horror-stricken through the lower strata of English society.

Out of the theme of switched identities, Mark Twain fashioned both a fiery assault upon social hypocrisy and injustice and a riotous comedy filled with high-spirited play.

In England this week Prince George Alexander Louis Winsdor was born. Celebrate the fact that we don't have a monarchy here by listening to these books. Yeah, I'm not sure how that works, either, but still, check 'em out.

To get either audiobook (or both!) start at the download page.

You'll need to install the OverDrive® Media Console™ first, but the page walks you through that. The audiobooks have download buttons below the green sync-head thing in the third column of the page.

Enjoy!

Free Audiobooks: Grave Mercy and Hamlet

Two audiobooks are available for free from SYNC this week (through July 24th).

Grave Mercy
by Robin LaFevers
Robin LaFevers has enchanted young readers with her Nathaniel Fludd: Beastologist and Theodosia series, which earned starred reviews from Booklist and Publishers Weekly. In Grave Mercy, LaFevers crafts a fantastical tale sure to win her a new fan base among young adults. Escaping an arranged marriage, 17-year-old Ismae finds sanctuary in the St. Mortain convent, where the sisters worship the gods of old. There Ismae learns that the God of Death has special plans for her—a destiny that will one day compel her to betray the man she loves.

AudioFile Magazine Review:
“In this medieval fantasy, Ismae is marked by a blood-red stain, which predicates that father sell her nuptials as if she were a prized pig. But her wedding night reveals that she’s been chosen by Mortain, god of death, to be his vengeful assassin. Narrator Erin Moon ably handles this twisty tale of intrigue. She smoothly delivers French pronunciations and medieval vocabulary as she describes Ismae’s convent training and life at Brittany court. ...[S]he elevates the story with her warm and tender portrayal of a young woman who must understand her role as a spy, avenger, and lover.”

Hamlet
by William Shakespeare
Shakespeare’s timeless story of revenge, corruption, and murder is considered one of the greatest works in the English language. Prince Hamlet sets out to avenge his beloved father’s death at the hand of his uncle Claudius—but Hamlet’s spiral into grief and madness will have permanent and immutable consequences for the Kingdom of Denmark. Composed over 400 years ago, Hamlet remains one of the theater’s most studied and performed works, and is presented here in a stunning, sound-rich full-cast recording.

Hamlet will be on your senior-year reading list. Download and listen now; be super-smart later!

To get either audiobook (or both!) start at the download page.

You'll need to install the OverDrive® Media Console™ first, but the page walks you through that. The audiobooks have download buttons below the green sync-head thing in the third column of the page.

Enjoy!

Free Audiobooks: The Peculiar and Oliver Twist

Two audiobooks are available for free from SYNC this week (through July 17th).

The Peculiar
by Stefan Bachmann
Don’t get yourself noticed and you won’t get yourself hanged.

In the faery slums of Bath, Bartholomew Kettle and his sister Hettie live by these words. Bartholomew and Hettie are changelings—Peculiars—and neither faeries nor humans want anything to do with them.

One day a mysterious lady in a plum-colored dress comes gliding down Old Crow Alley. Bartholomew watches her through his window. Who is she? What does she want? And when Bartholomew witnesses the lady whisking away, in a whirling ring of feathers, the boy who lives across the alley—Bartholomew forgets the rules and gets himself noticed.

First he’s noticed by the lady in plum herself, then by something darkly magical and mysterious, by Jack Box and the Raggedy Man, by the powerful Mr. Lickerish . . . and by Arthur Jelliby, a young man trying to slip through the world unnoticed, too, and who, against all odds, offers Bartholomew friendship and a way to belong.

Part murder mystery, part gothic fantasy, part steampunk adventure, The Peculiar is Stefan Bachmann’s riveting, inventive, and unforgettable debut novel.

Oliver Twist
by Charles Dickens
One of Charles Dickens’s most popular novels, Oliver Twist is the story of a young orphan who dares to say, “Please, sir, I want some more.” After escaping from the dark and dismal workhouse where he was born, Oliver finds himself on the mean streets of Victorian-era London and is unwittingly recruited into a scabrous gang of scheming urchins. In this band of petty thieves, Oliver encounters the extraordinary and vibrant characters who have captured audiences’ imaginations for more than 150 years: the loathsome Fagin, the beautiful and tragic Nancy, the crafty Artful Dodger, and the terrifying Bill Sikes, perhaps one of the greatest villains of all time.

Rife with Dickens’s disturbing descriptions of street life, the novel is buoyed by the purity of the orphan Oliver. Though he is treated with cruelty and surrounded by coarseness for most of his life, his pious innocence leads him at last to salvation—and the shocking discovery of his true identity.

These both look good to me. Check 'em out!

To get either audiobook (or both!) start at the download page.

You'll need to install the OverDrive® Media Console™ first, but the page walks you through that. The audiobooks have download buttons below the green sync-head thing in the third column of the page.

Enjoy!

Free Audiobooks: Carter Finally Gets It and She Stoops to Conquer

Two audiobooks are available for free from SYNC this week (through July 10rd).

Carter Finally Gets It
by Brent Crawford
Meet Will Carter, but feel free to call him Carter. (Yes, he knows it’s a lazy nickname, but he didn’t have much say in the matter.) Here are five things you should know about him:



1. He has a stuttering problem, particularly around boobs and belly buttons.

2. He battles Attention Deficit Disorder every minute of every day…unless he gets distracted.

3. He’s a virgin, mostly because he’s no good at talking to girls (see number 1).

4. He’s about to start high school.

5. He’s totally not ready.



Join Carter for his freshman year, where he’ll search for sex, love, and acceptance anywhere he can find it. In the process, he’ll almost kill a trombone player, face off with his greatest nemesis, suffer a lot of blood loss, narrowly escape death, run from the cops (not once, but twice), get caught up in a messy love triangle, meet his match in the form of a curvy drill teamer, and surprise the hell out of everyone, including himself.

She Stoops to Conquer
by Oliver Goldsmith
Love, lies, and dysfunctional families. Sound like your last family gathering? Try this one on for laughs. Two randy young gents, Charles and George, set out to woo the alluring and upper-crust Kate and Constance. But inexperienced Charles is shy and clumsy around upper-class ladies, so it s the barmaid who catches his eye. But is she really who she seems? Bawdy high-jinx, popped pretensions, and good dirty fun are the hallmarks of this romping frolic that s kept audiences laughing for over two centuries.

She Stoops to Conquer is actually a play (don't freak out). Read along as you listen with a copy of the text from Gutenberg.com.

To get either audiobook (or both!) start at the download page.

You'll need to install the OverDrive® Media Console™ first, but the page walks you through that. The audiobooks have download buttons below the green sync-head thing in the third column of the page.

Enjoy!

Free E-book + Audiobook: The Federalist Papers

Tantor Audio is offering free downloads of an e-book/audiobook combo of The Federalist Papers. You will likely study these documents in AP U.S. History (and possibly AP English III). Get a jump on success and download (and read/listen to) these foundational documents in the creation of the USA.

No financial information is required to establish an account or download free files from Tantor. This is likely a limited-time offer, so get it while you can.

Free Audiobooks: Rotters and Frankenstein

Two audiobooks are available for free from SYNC this week (through July 3rd).

Rotters
by Daniel Kraus
Grave-robbing. What kind of monster would do such a thing? It’s true that Leonardo da Vinci did it, Shakespeare wrote about it, and the resurrection men of nineteenth-century Scotland practically made it an art. But none of this matters to Joey Crouch, a sixteen-year-old straight-A student living in Chicago with his single mom. For the most part, Joey’s life is about playing the trumpet and avoiding the daily humiliations of high school.

Everything changes when Joey’s mother dies in a tragic accident and he is sent to rural Iowa to live with the father he has never known, a strange, solitary man with unimaginable secrets. At first, Joey’s father wants nothing to do with him, but once father and son come to terms with each other, Joey’s life takes a turn both macabre and exhilarating.
 
Daniel Kraus’s masterful plotting and unforgettable characters make Rotters a moving, terrifying, and unconventional epic about fathers and sons, complex family ties, taboos, and the ever-present specter of mortality.

Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley
Victor Frankenstein learns the secret of producing life, and so, by putting together parts of various corpses, he creates the Frankenstein monster. The monster is huge and disformed, but he means no harm to anyone–until constant ill treatment drives him to murder and revenge. This easy-to-read version of Mary Shelley’s long-standing masterpiece easily captures the sadness and horror of the original.

Frankenstein has traditionally been assigned in the 12th grade at TJ, so listening to it now will make the reading all the easier later. Rotters sounds good to me; I think I'll listen to it on one of the road trips I've got coming up.

To get either audiobook (or both!) start at the download page.

You'll need to install the OverDrive® Media Console™ first, but the page walks you through that. The audiobooks have download buttons below the green sync-head thing in the third column of the page.

Enjoy!

Free Audiobooks: Once and "Letter from a Birmingham Jail"

Two audiobooks are available for free from SYNC this week (through June 26th).

Once
by Morris Gleitzman
Felix lives in a convent orphanage in Poland. He is convinced his parents are still alive and that they will one day come back to get him. When Nazi soldiers come to the orphanage Felix decides to escape and make his way home.The journey to find his parents is a long and difficult one, as Poland is occupied by the Nazis and a dangerous place for a Jewish boy. Felix manages to live and look after himself and another orphan, Zelda, with the help of a kind dentist, Barney, who is hiding and looking after a number of Jewish children. When the Nazis discover them, Barney makes the ultimate sacrifice for the children – electing to go with them on the train to the death camps, rather than taking the option of freedom offered by a Nazi soldier, one of his grateful patients.

"Letter from a
Birmingham Jail"
by Martin Luther King, Jr.
April 16th. The year is 1963. Birmingham, Alabama has had a spring of non-violent protests known as the Birmingham Campaign, seeking to draw attention to the segregation against blacks by the city government and downtown retailers. The organizers longed to create a non-violent tension so severe that the powers that be would be forced to address the rampant racism head on. Recently arrested was Martin Luther King, Jr.. It is there in that jail cell that he writes this letter; on the margins of a newspaper he pens this defense of non-violence against segregation. His accusers, though many, in this case were not the white racist leaders or retailers he protested against, but 8 black men who saw him as “other” and as too extreme. To them and to the world he defended the notion that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" is one of the most significant documents of the 1960's Civil Rights movement. This should be assigned reading at some point in your high school and college career, so download it and listen now. You'll appear all the more brilliant later when it is assigned.

To get either audiobook (or both!) start at the download page.

You'll need to install the OverDrive® Media Console™ first, but the page walks you through that. The audiobooks have download buttons below the green sync-head thing in the third column of the page.

Enjoy!

Two More Free Audiobooks Because Why Not?

Both of these downloads require you to create accounts with the websites offering the free audiobooks, but neither require you to enter financial information for the freebie.

Greek Gods
by William Smith*
LearnOutLoud offers a free download of Greek Gods, which includes 14 brief audio sketches of each of the major Greek Deities; providing the listener with information on lineage, characteristics, historical significance and artistic renditions. Edited by William Smith along with a team of thirty-five classics scholars, these entries from the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology serve as one of the most comprehensive guides to classical mythology drawing from a wide array of sources in Greek and Roman literature. If you struggled with Hamilton's Mythology in class (or didn't, because you never bothered to read it), I recommend giving this a listen.

The gods covered in this presentation are the following:

• Zeus
• Hera
• Poseidon
• Demeter
• Apollo
• Athena
• Ares
• Aphrodite
• Hephaestus
• Artemis
• Hermes
• Hestia
• Hades
• Dionysus

Riders of the Purple Sage
by Zane Grey
Through June 19, Downpour.com offers downloads of Zane Grey's classic Western Riders of the Purple Sage

In Cottonwoods, Utah, in 1871, a woman stands accused and a man is sentenced to whipping. Into this travesty of small-town justice rides the one man whom the town elders fear. His name is Lassiter, and he is a notorious gunman who’s come to avenge his sister’s death. It doesn’t take Lassiter long to see that this once peaceful Mormon community is controlled by the corrupt Deacon Tull, a powerful elder who’s trying to take the woman’s land by forcing her to marry him, branding her foreman as a dangerous “outsider.” Lassiter vows to help them, but when the ranch is attacked by horse thieves, cattle rustlers, and a mysterious masked rider, he realizes that they’re up against something bigger—and more brutal—than the land itself.

If you find Westerns too old-timey for your tastes, I encourage you to give this a listen. You can also read along with a download of the text from Gutenberg.org, though the audiofile is a restored (complete & unedited) version of Grey's manuscript: There will be differences, and some sections were originally edited to avoid offending sensitive readers, some parts on the audiobook may be controversial. Still try it out.


*No, not Will Smith, but how cool would that be?

Free Audiobooks: Raven Boys and Bless Me, Ultima

Two audiobooks are available for free from SYNC this week (through June 19th).

Raven Boys
by Maggie Stiefvater
It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive.

Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them-not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her.

His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.

But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all-family money, good looks, devoted friends-but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little.

For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.

Bless Me, Ultima
by Rudolfo Anaya
With hundreds of thousands of copies in print, Bless Me, Ultima has been called the most widely read Mexican-American novel in the English language. Richly evocative, it has earned its place among the classics of modern literature, even drawing favorable comparisons to Herman Melville’s legendary Moby Dick. As Tony follows his own path toward adulthood, he relies on the wisdom of Ultima—a magical healer—to forge his unique identity.

I've taught Bless Me, Ultima before, and it's well worth the read ... or in this case, listen (one of the funniest Christmas pageants evar). And hey, no IWA. What a deal!

To get either audiobook (or both!) start at the download page.

You'll need to install the OverDrive® Media Console™ first, but the page walks you through that. The audiobooks have download buttons below the green sync-head thing in the third column of the page.

Enjoy!